American Rum 8. Taverns

AMERICAN RUM 8. TAVERNS

“When first entering upon a colonial design, the first building the Spanish erect is a church; and the first building the Dutch erect is a fort. But the English, when settling anew, the first building that they erect is a Tavern”. They used to have this joke in the West Indies at the beginning of the XVIII Century, and it well captures the importance of Taverns, and of drinking in general, in the life of English people, both in their homeland and in the colonies.

And, as far as we are concerned, a large proportion of the rum produced in and imported to New England and to all the colonies was consumed not at home, but in the taverns.

In Massachusetts, taverns were set up from the very beginning for the “receiving and refreshment of travellers and strangers, and to serve the public occasions of such town or precint ”.

Therefore they fulfilled a public function. First of all, they were meant to feed and lodge travellers and strangers suitably, then they were used as a gathering place for the community on various occasions. For example, the sittings of ordinary civil courts were often held in taverns. The colonies were travelled back and forth by traders and travellers, then there were judges and other civil servants who had to travel regularly to the towns and villages for their work. There was, in short, a limited but steady flow of travellers of middle to upper social rank, and the idea was to offer them the necessary, and possibly comfortable, accommodation. The fact that also local people gathered there to drink in their free time was of secondary importance, and it was of ten barely tolerated by the authorities .

Then, of course, taverns attracted also vagabonds, adventurers, odd preachers and other people to be wary of. But the authorities kept watch. John Josselyn is for us an invaluable source of information, this is what he tells us:

“ In 1637, there were not many houses in the Town of Boston, amongst which were two houses of entertainment called Ordinaries, into which if a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that Office, who would trust himself into his company uninvited, and if he called more drink than the Officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and appoint the proportion, beyond which he could not get one drop.”

Taverns spread everywhere and became one of the main centres of social life in New England and all over the Continental Colonies. In the first decades, they weren’t created as such, but they were private houses converted into taverns as best as possible, later there is evidence of buildings planned and built specifically as taverns.

They were so increasingly necessary that the authorities of the Colonies obliged all the communities to have at least one tavern. In the villages, but also in the towns, public places available for gatherings were really few: the church and the meeting house, both usually bitterly cold and where it was necessary to have a dignified, proper behaviour. In a society hat was still poor and, in the North, had to withstand long, bleakly cold winters, the tavern provided its customers with a warm, fire- lit place where they could meet. In the tavern, by the hearth, you could drink beer, cider and various kinds of spirits, but mostly rum.

As well as taverns, there were retailers. They were supposed to be shops or private houses where they sold beer, cider and other alcoholic beverages which could not be consumed on the premises but had to be taken away and drunk in the buyers’ own homes. For this reason, retailers were forbidden to sell cups or glasses: they were allowed to sell only by the bottle or, anyway, in vessels of a certain capacity. Actually, often the owners added a few tables illegally, dealt out a few drams and, in fact, became a poorer version of the taverns.

All through the XVII Century, therefore, taverns were promoted by the authorities, but they were also subject to rules and regulations. In order to run a tavern, or even to be a simple retailer you needed a licence issued by the authorities, which was granted only to citizens of proven, unimpeacheable morality. Soon, licences had to be renewed annually, and the licence extension could be refused if public decency was not observed, if there had been brawls, gambling and other forms of immorality. In Massachusetts, in the early decades of the century, there was an effort to limit alcohol consumption, gambling, dancing, and the very sojourn of customers in the tavern. Even the prices were subject to regulations, and, to a certain extent, the quality of the products and of the service too.

Regulations were indeed tight. I don’t know how effective they were; the very fact that the same prohibitions are repeated over and over again during the years may suggest that they didn’t work very well, after all. But they certainly made life difficult for the tavern keepers. There was a continuous tension between the pressure from below to open more taverns and be more free to run and frequent them, and a corresponding pressure from the authorities, pushed by the puritan clergy, to limit the number of taverns and regulate them in minute detail. And, among all the things that were consumed in the taverns, the one which provoked more suspicion and alarm in the clergy and the authorities was rum.

-Article written by Marco Pierini-

My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where a still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid, but my real passion has always been History. And through History I have always tried to know the world, and men. Life brought me to work in tour ism, event organization and vocational training. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum),that runs a beach bar and selects and distributes Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it. And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History. But now it is the History of Rum. Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions. All this I try to cover in this column, in my FB profile, www.facebook/marco.pierini.3 and in my articles on the Italian webpage www.bartender.it .